The Incident

How’s this for a concept? The upcoming iPhone game The Incident plays like a cross between Katamari Damacy and Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. You play as Frank, an average guy who one day finds that the sky is falling, raining random objects onto his head.

Half of the fun of The Incident is in avoiding these objects for as long as you can, scaling the mountain of junk that they create. Powerups like a protective helmet and health upgrades will drift upwards tied to balloons, but you have to watch out for bombs, which can cause just as much damage as a piano falling on your head.

The other half of the fun is in seeing what kind of random objects come crashing down. Ordinary objects like cars, crates, and bicycles are mixed with more bizarre objects like moai heads, Greek columns, and cellos. You’ll get a quick heads-up from a blinking bar at the top of the screen that tells you something’s about to crash down, but until it falls on you, you’ll have no idea what it actually is.

The Incident is mainly controlled by tilt, with a single tap on the screen to make Frank jump. One survival tactic we found was that you can use long objects like grandfather clocks to help shield you from falling debris, but at a certain point you’ll become stuck and have to be whisked back to the top of the heap by a magical green bubble.

The Incident looks incredibly silly, but in a good way. It has a surprising amount of charm and replayability– you’ll definitely want to keep playing to see all the various items that fall from the sky. And the pixel graphics are pixel-perfect, taking a retro style and adding a surreal twist.

You can stay on top of The Incident’s development with Big Bucket Software’s very interesting blog or the game’s website. We don’t have word yet on a release date, but we’re hoping to see it on the App Store soon.

The Incident is a mobile game starring Frank, an unfortunate fellow who must scramble to the top of the debris constantly raining down on him. Frank seemingly came through that event stronger than ever, because now he’s starring in his own platforming game. The title is very early in development, and is yet unnamed aside from a code name (BB3). You can take a look at a brief video of the game’s progress over at Big Bucket Software’s blog.

Imagine waking up, putting on your best shirt and tie, and going outside to hail a cab. You get your cab, all right– from above. That incident uncorks the heavens, and next thing you know, a hail of patchwork trash comes down from above. How do you react? Do you burrow into the lowest tunnel available and tremble? Or do you roll up your sleeves and start climbing a trash tower with the intent to reach out and punch the face of God?

In The Incident by Big Bucket Software, you are forced to man up and scale Mount Trash. You’ll be happy you chose to brave The Incident’s odd rainshower, since it’s a terrifically fun vertical scroller in the spirit of Doodle Jump, and it boasts appealing retro graphics. The Incident only knows one song, though, and is best experienced in short bursts.

King of the Heap.

The gameplay, while monotonous, makes diving into The Incident a snap. You make the main character– We call him “Fred” because he looks like Fred Flintstone after a go at Atkins– dart left and right by tilting the iPhone (the sensitivity is adjustable). He jumps when you tap the screen.

A white light flashes from above to warn you where the next piece of trash is going to fall, and the object is to avoid conking Fred on the noggin while you assemble a trash tower that will let you pierce the heavens. Fred wields some measure of incredible strength, as he can push trash around to make piles and burrow out of trouble whenever necessary.

What makes Fred’s climb especially interesting is the nature of the trash that falls from above. There’s some seriously weird stuff that comes down, including arcade cabinets, electric guitars, grand pianos, shadowy caged creatures, Easter Island heads, street signs, Greek columns, icicles, and so on. You’ll be mesmerized the first time you play. Of course, that might be part of The Incident’s plan: It’s easy to get so distracted by the nature of the storm itself that you forget to watch out. Next thing you know, you’re done in by Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Three hits means a life lost.

We’re seeing double! Four Freds!

Luckily, the first level of The Incident takes care of you by slowly easing you into the game. Stuff falls relatively slowly, health powerups are plentiful, and so are bonus coins (get ten for a 1UP). Checkpoints are close together, so if– sorry, when– you die, you won’t be pushed too far back.

Once Fred hits the mountains, though, the gloves are off. Stuff falls faster and more frequently. Health powerups become more scarce, and cursed balloons drift up from above. This might be a shocker, but cursed balloons take away health if you pop them. The gameplay only gets more frantic from there.

After about 10 to 20 intense minutes with The Incident, the appeal starts to wear a bit and you’ll likely turn it off. The good news is that the game feels pretty fresh when you return, so you’ll have scaled Jacob’s ladder of crud before very long. The Incident is fun, it’s quick, and even though you’ll move on from it sooner than later, your memories will be fond and warm.

With any luck, Big Bucket will include an update for online leaderboards. We want the world to know that we endured death by Maneki Neko at 6 meters.

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We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math.

It’s not always easy to tear your kids away from their tablets and make them do something edifying. Thankfully, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math relieves you of this task by turning mathematics into a fun touchscreen video game. Win win!

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There are more than two dozen mini-games, split across three categories: Numbers, Shapes and Measurements, and Add and Subtract. According to the developer the difficulty of these puzzles is adaptive too, so kids of any ability can be both encouraged and challenged.

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We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, The House of Da Vinci by Blue Brain Games. There’s a reason Leonardo Da Vinci is the only renaissance figure who routinely shows up in video games you know. With his remarkable inventiveness and genius for creative problem-solving, Da Vinci was a gamer through and through. He was just born 500 hundred years too soon. Thankfully, there are studios like Blue Brain Games to bring him to life in videogame form. The House of Da Vinci, which comes to us courtesy of a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign, is a puzzler that seeks to channel the artistry and innovation of its title character.

You play as one of Da Vinci’s more promising apprentices, and you have the challenging task of trying to work out where the hell he’s gone. Was he assassinated by the church? Who knows. Has he quietly gone into a retirement? Perhaps. Did he accidentally invent a shrink ray and shrink himself down to the size of an dustmite? Probably not. Da Vinci’s workshop looks beautiful, thanks to some impressive 3D graphics, and the in-game environment is crammed with all the elaborate machines and crazy inventions you’d expect to find in the workplace of a renaissance genius.(more…)

Poly Bridge is out now on iOS, and it’s good to have it! It’s a great game and many seem to agree that it’s the best bridge builder game available. But the iOS versions, so far, is missing the sandbox mode. I would hope that it’s coming soon in an update. If you are all interested in physics puzzlers, grab this one. (Note: the video is for the PC version, I have yet to see a trailer for the mobile version, the developer Dry Cactus isn’t that great at marketing…)

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